Magic Underground: The Complete Collection (Magic Underground Anthologies Book 4)

by Melinda Kucsera

  Using the distraction, he stomped hard on his captor’s instep. The fairy cried out, stumbling, and the grip on Simith’s arms loosened. He tore one side free and drove an elbow into his foe’s ribs, feeling one snap under the force. The fairy dropped to his knees, wheezing, but Firo was already turning back. Simith aimed a desperate kick at the Helm’s hand and sent the Sorrow Blade spinning from his grip. With a snarl, Firo lunged forward, fist raised. Simith grabbed Katie.

  “Forgive me for this,” he told her and swung her in front of the incoming blow. She let out a muffled shriek, magical tethers preventing her from blocking it.

  Realization filled Firo’s eyes, but it was too late to draw back. The strike connected with her cheek and sent her reeling into Simith. He caught her to him, easing her to the ground. She had her eyes squeezed shut, groaning from behind the gag, but still conscious.

  Firo stared down at them, his expression caught somewhere between bewildered and appalled.

  “You bargained my life in exchange for your hostage,” Simith explained. “A hostage you promised not to harm. You’ve foresworn yourself.”

  “Because of you,” Firo spat. “Striking her was no intention of mine.”

  “Did you stipulate that in the agreement, or did you swear no harm at all?”

  “It doesn’t matter. No one would hand me the blame for a trap like that.”

  “Except the Fae.”

  Their mention stumbled him for only the slightest moment. “There are no Fae. They no longer exist.”

  “It seems some escaped to other realms. Like this one.”

  Firo paled. “I don’t believe you.”

  A swift wind gusted through the front door. The sky beyond it crackled with lightning. The lights overhead flickered.

  Firo unsheathed his crystal blade. “You allied yourself with the Fae? Has your race no memory of their savagery?”

  Simith settled Katie beneath the nearest table. Her eyes seemed clearer, but she was still bound. He needed to stall for time until the Fae arrived.

  He stood and faced his commander. “Fairy kind may have defeated their immortal cousins, but you studied well at their feet. Loyalty in exchange for peace, that was your promise, yet all we have known is death.”

  “And you shall know it now,” Firo answered softly, drawing his crystal sword. “For if I’m to die, you will join me.”

  He swung his blade, a blindingly fast stroke to cleave him from shoulder to hip. Simith flexed his wings, turning swiftly to catch the wind coming through the doors. It launched him past the slash of Firo’s sword, but he quickly lost control of his flight in the rising gale. He rolled once in midair, flaring his wings like sails to boost him upward. He caught hold of the rectangular edge of a quad of lights, still blinking erratically. Through the glass panes of the ceiling, lightning streaked the sky.

  A scream turned his attention downward. The fairy Jessa escaped had regained his feet and grabbed for her. Both struggled in the wind, but Jessa more so as she tried to evade his grasp. Clay planters flew across the room like leaves in a storm. One smashed into Firo as he made his way to them, and he staggered. Jessa made a run for the side entrance, but a table shifted suddenly, clipping her. She fell. The fairy advanced, dagger drawn. Jessa skittered back on her elbows.

  Simith let go of his perch, straining wings and muscle still sore from injury. He had no magic to lend to the attack, only the speed of his descent. He crashed into the fairy like a bird of prey and took him to the ground. Clamping one arm around his foe, he knocked the weapon from his grasp with the other. The fairy bucked in his grip. They grappled across the floor. For a heartbeat, Simith had the upper hand.

  The tingle of magic forewarned his loss. One moment, he had the fairy pinned, the next a pulse of power hurled him into a glass pane of the greenhouse wall. It cracked, the impact ripping the air from his lungs. The world spun and he shook his head roughly. The fairy had located his dagger. Only a handful of paces separated them. Simith reached back to pull himself up.

  A hand caught his instead. Jessa crouched beside him. The wind thrashed her midnight hair around her face, her dark eyes huge with fear. A knowing calm lingered in them too, as though she had seen death before and long expected it to come again. He did not wish her to see it. He did not want her to die. He’d been unmade by violence, and some irrational place in his heart promised if he could save a life—this life, hers—perhaps he too could be saved.

  Simith kept hold of her hand and stood, the wind so fierce he had to brace against its pull. He cast his gaze upward, testing his wings in the relentless gale. It flattened them painfully against his back. He didn’t dare try to fly them to the rafters in this. The atmosphere was heavy with magic. The Fae would soon arrive. Jessa tugged on his hand in warning.

  Firo had joined his comrade, his mouth moving in what was surely Simith’s true name, but the wind swallowed the sound. They rushed forward to attack, barely hindered by the wind with the aid of their magic. Simith pulled Jessa behind him. The side entrance door wasn’t far. If he held their attention, she could escape. They’d cut him down quickly, but it might be enough time.

  He pushed her toward the door. “Go,” he shouted, and ran toward his enemies, a battle cry rattling from his throat.

  They stumbled to a halt before he reached them, faces slack with horror. Simith slowed in confusion, following the direction of their gaze. Jessa was beside the side entrance. The door had been thrown open and Relle stood on the threshold. She wore no glamour; her Fae features spectral in the jagged illumination. There was murder in her silver eyes.

  She shot out a hand. Simith barely rolled out of the way before a cyclone blasted from her fingertips. It flung Firo and his soldiers across the room like butterflies on a sudden draft. Jessa must have called out her name, for Relle turned her head slowly to regard her friend, squinting as if she didn’t fully see her. Worry clutched him. The magic he sensed rolling off Relle was like nothing he’d ever felt. Wild. Ruthless. A lightning bolt of pure brutality. It was as though she herself had been spelled.

  Jessa pointed, and he caught Katie’s name on her voice as he hastened toward them. Without a word, Relle moved the direction she’d indicated. The door slammed shut behind her, causing Jessa to jump back. She grasped the door handle, tugging furiously. It didn’t open.

  “It’s not locked,” she yelled when he reached her. She put her shoulder into it. “It’s jammed or something.”

  Shouts of alarm threaded the wind. Simith turned. At the front entrance, silhouetted by shadow and storm, a single figure sat in her wheeled chair of metal. Power blazed in a platinum aura around her. Firo and his soldiers had recovered. They stood shoulder to shoulder facing her, magic cascading from their drawn blades. The Helm shouted orders Simith had once followed into battle. “Stand firm.” “Courage before despair.” But they would find no victory here. A pang of regret swept through him, but he set it aside. They had chosen their course and must each meet the consequences of that path.

  He pulled Jessa away from the door. “We must take cover.”

  “But…” She caught sight of Ionia and lurched sideways into him. He steadied her with an arm around her shoulders, scanning the debris-strewn landscape. Where could they hide from what was coming?

  There. Behind the barricade he’d made for her earlier. Some of the buckets had been tipped over, but the corner walls might protect them from the worst. He led Jessa that direction, wind thwarting his speed.

  “What about Katie?” she hollered.

  Simith caught sight of Relle bending down next to a prone figure beneath the table where he’d left Katie. She gestured with one hand and the wind vanished from her hair and clothes. A shield. Simith sucked in a breath. They were out of time.

  It began with a howling. A vaporous shrieking that filled his ears. The flickering lights went out. Firo and his soldiers roared as they charged Ionia, hurling blasts of magic ahead of them. Their power split harmlessly around her, dissolved w
ith a blink of her wrath-filled eyes. The gale blowing in changed, twisting itself into a spin that threw the fairies from their feet. It lifted them into the air.

  Jessa cried out as the wind pulled her legs from under her. If not for Simith’s arm around her shoulders, she’d have been swept away. He crushed her against him, beating his wings furiously to combat the currents, boots sliding over the ground as if on ice. He spied an overturned table on its side, the top wedged against a support beam, and managed to drag them to it as Ionia began to chant. Flames threaded the cyclone, embers of amber and gold that reminded him of the fireflies in the marshes of home. When they reached the fairies, their skin smoldered and charred. They screamed.

  “Don’t look.” Simith blocked Jessa’s view when she tried to turn, pushing her down behind the table. She curled herself around the support beam at her middle, gripping it tight just as every window exploded.

  He threw his body over hers. Glass shattered around them, bouncing off the table and off of him. A pinprick of pain awoke on his hand. Dots of blood splashed the ground in front of Jessa’s face.

  “Simith,” she said.

  “Stay down.”

  He folded himself closer and ducked his head, the sound of her quick breath in his ear. He didn’t know how long they stayed that way, clinging to the beam and to each other. The fairies’ screams went silent. Then the wind quieted and the wild sense of magic lifting his hairs dimmed.

  Simith risked a look skyward, careful not to let the glass sheeting from his shoulders fall onto Jessa. The night sky glimmered once more with stars; the storm clouds burned away like mist beneath a high sun. The sudden quiet left his ears ringing.

  “Is it over?” Jessa asked.

  “I think so.”

  “Jessa?” someone called from nearby, a touch of panic in their voice. “Are you okay? Where are you?”

  “Katie,” she whispered, shifting beneath him to rise.

  He crawled out from behind the table and offered Jessa a hand. She accepted it, and he took the moment to scan her for injury. A few scratches on her arms and legs, but otherwise unharmed. Relief coursed through him.

  Jessa, spotting her friend by the front entrance, dashed off, skirting tables and hopping over debris. Simith followed behind slowly. He saw no sign of the fairies, though a charred scent lingered on the air. Relle knelt beside her grandmother’s chair. The elder Fae sat slumped, her head tipped back, her eyes closed. Overexerted, perhaps. Both of them, he thought, noting that neither wore any glamour now, their Fae features and long limbs revealed in the moonlight.

  He paused with a glance at the side door. Might it be open now? There would come no better moment than this to escape. Even if the Helms wanted him dead, he stood a chance at evading them in his realm where he could regain his magic. Here, he had none, and the Fae made it clear they didn’t trust him with their secret. He highly doubted they meant him to live out his days in this world.

  “Stay where you are, pixie,” Relle said.

  Simith closed his eyes, cursed his hesitancy, and turned. She’d stepped away from her grandmother and approached, his crystal sword in her hand, his bandolier of knives slung over one arm. When she reached him, he blinked in surprise as she held both out to him in offering. He took them immediately, settling his blade into in its scabbard. The weight at his side balanced him in a way little else did.

  “Go quickly,” Relle told him. “Before Granny wakes. She won’t let you go, but I will.”

  He had no words for a moment. “Why?”

  Her gaze settled on Jessa and Katie where they stood locked in an embrace.

  “Fairy trickery would’ve taken someone precious from me if not for your clever thinking. The fairies are dead, burned up along with the Sorrow Blade.” She touched her face almost self-consciously. “It took everything we had, but it’s gone. Only you know we live here, now.”

  She left a question in those words. Simith answered it.

  “I will tell no one.” He extended his hand. “I swear it.”

  She returned the clasp, exhaling slowly, silver eyes searching his. “I believe you. Now, go. I can’t promise your freedom if Granny comes to before you’re gone.”

  He nodded once, casting a final look toward Jessa—only to find her coming toward him. Her friend trailed behind, her stare riveted on Relle, who staunchly avoided meeting it.

  “I must say goodbye,” he told Jessa, feeling a strange pressure in his chest.

  “I know,” she said. “I’ll walk with you.”

  Chapter Eight

  “Where will you go?” Jessa asked as they ambled down the lanes of sunflowers to the tree line where the insanity of the night began. Dawn wasn’t far off, but so much had happened she found it difficult to believe only hours had passed and not days.

  They’d split off from the others at Relle’s house. Ionia slept on, utterly spent after the battle. As Relle explained before, magic stressed the body. Relle had looked ready to lie down herself, but had asked Katie to stay. To explain everything, she’d said. Jessa supposed that was only fair given all that her friend had been through. Katie was remarkably quiet the entire time, though she didn’t seem able to take her eyes off of Relle. Understandable. Finding out your long-time crush wasn’t fully human would make even someone as boisterous as Katie a bit contemplative.

  “The fairies have made my return to the legion impossible,” Simith replied to her question. “They’ll be looking for me, or those they sent to kill me.” He sighed. “I may travel home to Drifthorn whilst I determine what must be done. If they’ll have me.”

  The last came on a low murmur, sadness leaking through his stoic demeanor. She wished she knew how to comfort someone. Not a healer and not a soother, though he didn’t seem the sort to appreciate coddling. So, she didn’t.

  “That sounds like a terrible idea.”

  He looked at her, brows darting upward.

  “It’s a retreat,” she said firmly. “The fairies did all this because you arranged peace talks with the trolls and they wanted to stop them, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “That means the trolls never double crossed you. They wanted those peace talks. You outsmarted the fairies here, but if you give up now, they still win.”

  “Firo did not lie. I don’t have the backing of the Thistle Court to negotiate peace.”

  “But they use your people to fight their battles. What about the other pixies? Would they back you?”

  He didn’t respond, his gaze turning inward. Mulling over her words? Probably offended by her presumptuousness. She shouldn’t give him advice on matters she knew close to nothing about. It surprised her she had bothered. That was more like the old her, the one who once expressed her thoughts with enthusiasm. The one who had enthusiasm for anything at all, channeling her fever for life into verse capable of describing the indescribable.

  Was it the pregnancy lending her this zeal? The near death experience? She eyed Simith where he strode beside her. Maybe it was that someone had saved her life twice tonight, endangering himself to do it. She thought of his weight coming down atop her, how his hands had shielded her head, leaving his own vulnerable while the glass crumbled around them. It had shaken something loose in her. She wasn’t quite sure what, but she felt it in her chest, shining through the fog like a lighthouse.

  They reached the woods in silence, heading to the tree where the soil was still churned and scattered at the base of the trunk. He paused there, brushing his fingertips against the bark.

  “You’re right,” he said. “I must not retreat. If I can face the slaughter of lives without stepping backward, then I can do the same for the sake of peace. I will try again.”

  Worry gnawed at her. What if something happened to him because she’d goaded him into it?

  “Please, be careful. Don’t—Don’t go about it recklessly based on what I said.” She swallowed thickly. “I don’t know anything about your world.”

  “You may not know the details,
but your sight is clear.”

  “It’s not. Really.” She turned her gaze toward the west where darkness hung heaviest on the horizon. “How can I accuse you of retreating when I’ve been doing exactly that for months?”

  He moved closer. “What is it you flee from?”

  Her throat tightened. “Their absence.”

  The tattoos on her back pressed into her skin.

  Flight 276

  They whispered. Letters, numbers. A poetry award ceremony. A plane that never arrived. She hadn’t even wanted them to come, but they never listened.

  “We love you. We want to support you.”

  Grandma. Mom. Dad. Her older sisters.

  She hadn’t wanted them to come. “You’ll embarrass me,” she’d said. “I don’t need anybody there.” Had those been the last words between them?

  Now, there was no one. Now, she was always alone, the silence devastating. The emptiness where their voices had been like a hole she’d fallen down and couldn’t crawl out from.

  A brief touch on her shoulder brought her mind back. The trees. The fading scent of night on the air. Simith watched her, his face solemn with understanding. To her great relief, he said nothing. No platitudes. No attempt to cross the breach with examples of his own pain. Everyone suffered on their own, yet his brown eyes held hers with the warmth of solidarity, and she felt less alone.

  “I must go,” he said, reluctantly.

  “I wish I had something to give you,” she said. “Some little memento from my world. We haven’t known each other long, but…”

  “It’s strange to think we’ll never meet again.” He nodded. “Perhaps you could—” He flushed. “No. Forgive me.”

  “What?”

  “It’s too great a boon to ask.”

  “Simith,” she said, amused by his formality and deference. “Just tell me.”

  He hesitated, almost shy. “Will you speak a poem? I should like your words to accompany me.”